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Konqueror passes ACID2 Test!


Havin_it
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Great houpla among webpersons for this development.

 

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1129

 

It seems that in the middle of the cat-fighting between the Konq and Apple (Safari) teams, iCab popped out with a beta that passed the test, and somehow this brought the warring KHTML devs to a reconciliation of sorts, and Apple started sharing again. Just makes me feel all gooey inside :woops:

 

Anyone care about this?

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Ah, sorry. Good point. Acid2 is a test of standards-compliance. It's here:

 

http://webstandards.org/act/acid2/test.html

 

I read about it in a Sitepoint newsletter, article below:

 

Acid and Open Source

 

As you may already know, Apple's Safari browser for Mac OS X uses an offshoot of the open source browser Konqueror's KHTML page rendering engine. That offshoot is called WebKit. At the end of April, Apple made waves by announcing that its latest internal development version was the first browser to pass the Acid2 test of CSS standards compliance.

 

Of course until a public release of Safari containing these updates comes about, this news doesn't mean a whole lot, except that it might serve to annoy the developers of competing browsers a little.

 

One browser developer that it annoyed more than most is Konqueror team member Zack Rusin, who had to deal with an immediate expectation that Konqueror would be upgraded with the same changes as Safari. After all, as an open source browser, such updates would be immediately available to the public.

 

Rusin stepped up to explain that Apple's contributions of WebKit developments back to the KHTML engine tended to be sporadic and of questionable usefulness, so Acid2 compliance was still potentially a long way off. The rumour mill churned and the controversy grew.

 

While the Safari and Konqueror teams worked out the kinks of their relationship, the nearly unknown browser iCab snuck in and released a beta version that passed the Acid2 test as well! iCab is a commercial browser for Mac OS X available in both a free version and a Pro version that costs 29 euros. The beta version was the first publicly available browser to pass Acid2.

 

Controversy is apparently a powerful motivator, because the Konqueror and Safari teams got together to discuss their problems, and Konqueror was able to put together its own Acid2-compliant version by combining Apple's changes to Safari with their own code updates. Not only that, but Apple decided to release WebKit to public scrutiny and contribution as an Open Source project!

 

The rendering engine at the heart of Mozilla and Firefox is Gecko. There's no sign as yet of an Acid2-compliant Gecko update on the way, but Mozilla definitely sounds like it's standing still in this discussion. The truth of the matter is more like they're working towards stable releases of Firefox 1.1 and Mozilla 1.8, so they don't have time for the risky business like ripping into Acid2, but if Gecko isn't Acid2 compliant by the end of the year I'd be very surprised.

 

Opera is working on it; no word from Microsoft.

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